Blog

Innovative organizations are figuring out new ways to use publicly available data to solve the world's most intractable problems – think global poverty or climate change. This is good news for those whose mission it is to tackle these problems. It's also good news for business.

Large corporations spend millions of dollars each year to recruit and retain top talent. Businesses looking to fill a key executive position typically use professional recruiters—conducting extensive searches and often poaching directly from competitors.

As a venture capital firm, Omidyar Network has evaluated thousands of deals, and invested over $260 million dollars in for-profit companies. In many ways, our office environment resembles that of our Silicon Valley peers.

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Political interests and government policies need to be aligned to ensure competition, establish policies and promote entrepreneurship in emerging sectors. The right mix of government regulations and policies can accelerate the growth and reach of an industry sector to millions of people.

Do subsidies distort markets or inject them with the dynamism needed to scale new sectors? Omidyar Network evaluates the role of subsidies in spurring new markets and examines instances where, alternatively, they can lead to stagnation.

To move sectors, we need to focus funding to fill in the gaps. Omidyar Network identifies these gaps to be most present in early-stage, high-risk social impact businesses as well as in building infrastructure. How then, should do we direct deal flow?

Announcement

Agenda Edu, a platform that increases engagement in school settings, announced today that Omidyar Network has invested in the Brazilian startup to help them further scale, including platform improvements, and growth of its user base and team.

Article

The world’s largest project to formalize land rights of urban slum dwellers started earlier this year in Odisha, India, with support from Tata Trusts and Omidyar Network. Shalmoli Halder and Sushant Kumar discuss why this project matters and how to potentially replicate it elsewhere.